Weekly Housing Trends

The big story

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The typical American home is now 44 years old—and ripe for a midlife crisis. Homebuilding has been stuck at a six-year low, and now half of all homes are old enough to be flagged as structurally at-risk.

“By 40 to 50 years, homes often need significant repairs or replacements involving roofs, HVAC, plumbing, electrical panels, windows, and foundations,” explains Nancy Shipley of home inspection platform HouseMaster. These ticking time bombs often hide behind layers of fresh paint and updated kitchens, so a house might look fine but still be falling apart.

“With an older house, the scope of work can change quickly once you open the walls up,” says Maksim Sauchanka at BMR BelMax Remodeling. He recently renovated a 151-year-old house in Philadelphia that needed a new roof, sewage lines, HVAC, furnace, and other repairs that pushed the reno cost up to $70,000.

Another curveball? Many old homes are no longer up to code, as Brett Johnson of New Era Home Buyers learned after buying a 72-year-old house in Denver for $315,000. He poured $72,000 into replacing the galvanized plumbing and upgrading the electrical service to 200 amps to accommodate what a modern-day family needs to keep the lights (and laptops and Xboxes) up and running.

The one problem Johnson didn’t see coming? The power lines outside the house. “I had to raise them before the utility company would sign off,” he says. “That’s the kind of detail you don’t see coming until you’re standing in the yard staring up at wires, wondering why they’re basically head height. Older houses have a way of surprising you.”

The old home upside

But for buyers willing to revive an old home, decay isn’t always a dealbreaker. And for some, it’s a discount that can be flipped into sizable profits. Johnson sold that 72-year-old property for $480,000, netting $62,500 after renovation costs. “I do think there’s good money to be made renovating older homes, but only if you buy them at the right price,” Johnson says. “I spend a lot of time walking the property, looking at systems. I see investors miss issues all the time, or they spot the problem but underestimate what it’ll cost to fix.”

Two extra tips: Get an inspection and pull the property’s permit history. “A house with no permitted work in 40 years is probably hiding deferred maintenance everywhere. That gap tells you more than the inspection report will,” explains Rachid Abadli at LeaseBase, who has bought and renovated old homes in California. And since surprises are a given once you open the walls, cushion your reno budget accordingly. “I now go in budgeting a hard 30% contingency on any pre-1960 house,” he adds. “Anything under that is a win.”

Sauchanka agrees, adding, “My advice is not to avoid older homes; they can have great character and value. But buyers need to respect the age of the structure and budget for work behind the walls, under the floors, and above the ceiling—not just the pretty renovation work.”

      

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What's up this week

Realty check

Source: WalletHub; Designer: Andre Blockett.

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🪨 A “Billionaire’s Row” tower where J.Lo once lived is seeing sales prices plummet. Maybe because it’s raining “chunks of concrete.”

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🪑 Designers divulged five smart ways to use extra space—and three you’ll regret.

📐 This house is just 12.5 feet wide, which is narrower than some hallways. See the photos before you say never.

You asked, we answered

Q: Is the data center backlash changing where they get built?

Austin American-Statesman/Hearst Newspapers/Contributor/Getty Images

Those “you can’t drink data” protest signs may be working: Data centers now entering the construction pipeline are landing 34 miles from cities (up from 23 miles in the early 2020s) with 70% fewer houses around them than a decade ago. Put simply, data centers are heading to the country.

“The places absorbing this next wave of data centers look different from the places that absorbed the last one,” notes Realtor.com economist Glen Morgenstern. “They tend to be lower-income, lower-density, and farther from a city center, which usually also means fewer resources on hand—fewer attorneys, less organized civic engagement, and housing markets that react more slowly to new information.”

Granted, some rural landowners have made clear that they don’t want data centers in their backyard, either; one 82-year-old in Kentucky turned down a $26 million offer for her 1,200 acres. But others are taking the money, like a Pennsylvania couple who sold their struggling hog farm for $22 million. Big Tech is also targeting Texas oil fields and Native American land, where developers can sidestep much of the permitting and red tape that can delay the typical project by three to 10 years.

Wherever they end up, many data centers are working to be “better neighbors.” In March, seven major AI companies signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge committing to cover their own power costs rather than stick locals with the bills. Meanwhile, preliminary research suggests that real estate prices barely budge when a data center goes up nearby.

Got a question about real estate? Ask it here, and we’ll answer it in a future issue.

Real talk

Rebecca Churchill

Rebecca Churchill is a self-professed “old house addict” with the pedigree and purchases to prove it: She got hooked during her first job at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has since fed her habit by buying three homes, each more than 120 years old.

Q: You and old homes go way back. How did it start? “In 1999, my husband and I bought an 1885 rowhouse in Jersey City for $225,000. Then we bought a 1903 Victorian in New Providence, NJ, for $400,000 with stunning stained glass windows and trim made from American chestnut (a tree wiped out by a blight after they imported Chinese chestnuts to keep up with demand for wood). My current house with my second husband in Warrenton, VA, is the oldest: a former church and Civil War hospital built in 1842, bought for $430,000. It’s so old that if you look under the house, you see hand-hewn tree trunks!”

Q: What are the highs of owning an old home? “It’s a joy to own a piece of history. I have opened up walls and found interesting time capsules like medicine bottles and tools. I know somebody who found a bag of money in their walls, although sadly that’s never happened to me! Culturally, we’re seeing a return to old because they’re better made; you can’t get that quality or uniqueness in newer cookie-cutter homes.”

Q: What are the lows? “Sometimes it’s a money pit. The cost of materials is shocking. Historic designation or districts will restrict what kind of renovations or materials are allowed. We strip a lot of paint, since previous homeowners went through phases where they painted everything, including a white marble fireplace! To save money, we do a lot of the work ourselves. We raised our children stepping over buckets of nails. It gets tiresome. But the finished product is almost always worth it.”

Q: Do you think old homes are good investments? “Absolutely. We eventually sold our Jersey City house for $650,000, and it last sold in 2024 for $1,395,000. Although what I see on Zillow now, I barely recognize, with that Pottery Barn trend of painting everything white. After all that time we spent stripping wood, it’s heartbreaking. But you can be a steward only to a point.”

      

Housing market of the week

Anis Chity/Buy Property Morocco; Seng Chye Teo/Getty Images (market).

Think owning a home in Morocco is a hashish-infused pipe dream? Marrakech investor Anis Chity says it’s actually affordable. Just watch out for the adouls.

How he got started: “My focus was simple: small apartments in areas with practical rental demand,” says Chity, who owns four rentals. After fielding the same questions over and over from international buyers (Can foreigners buy property in Morocco? Is Airbnb allowed? How do I avoid scams?), he founded Buy Property Morocco to help new investors navigate his country’s real estate customs and quirks.

His market’s pros: “Marrakech has a strong mix of tourists, digital nomads, Moroccan diaspora buyers, European retirees, and foreign lifestyle buyers,” Chity explains. “For investors, that can create opportunities in both long- and short-term rentals.” Another perk? Foreigners can own property in Morocco and can sometimes find entry-level apartments for as little as $50,000 to $85,000.

The cons: “The market is not as transparent as the US, and carries serious due diligence risks outsiders underestimate,” Chity warns. One of the biggest blind spots is knowing the difference between “titled” and “traditional” properties. Titled properties are registered with Morocco’s land registry, which records the mortgage, liens, easements, and other rights—all of which makes financing and resale easier. Traditional ownership, or Melkia, relies on documents prepared by adouls, legal professionals with roots in Islamic law. “My wife’s parents are trying to sell, and the main complication is the Melkia, which makes it more difficult to confirm boundaries, previous transfers, heirs and co-owners,” he explains.

His advice: “For a new foreign investor, I’d say pay more for a clean titled property rather than chase a Melkia bargain,” Chity says. And since Morocco does not have a single transparent Zillow-style database of verified recent sale prices, you’ll need to confirm values through on-the-ground comps. “Asking prices can be emotional, inflated, or based on what the seller hopes a foreigner will pay,” he warns. “Never skip the notary process. Do not try to be too clever on your first deal. A cheap property can become expensive if you don’t prepare.”

Got a home or housing market you want to highlight in The Playbook? Tell us more about it here, and we’ll consider featuring it in an upcoming issue.